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Late-comer to Stalker SOC...this is a great game

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Superb game indeed, it still remains the best of the trilogy in my opinion, but CoP does feel more open-ended than either SoC or CS. I thought that Clear Sky had its good moments, but its imposed linearity near the end (it simply turns into a generic on-rails corridor shooter) and its barely-working faction wars (which was unnecessary anyway and just overpopulated the Zone) put me out of it very soon, I completed it once only and never tried to complete it again, but I did try a few mods for it, one of which I liked a lot, namely S.M.R.T.E.R. (there's also a SMRTER variant for Call of Pripyat).

With that said I think that Shadow of Chernobyl has the best atmosphere of the three, although I must admit I've yet to complete CoP, although I've made it far enough I believe, but a few things remains to be seen. In SoC I'd say that the X-18 Labs alone already beats pretty much everything I've played in recent FPSes when it comes to suspense and immersion, but there's also the Agroprom underground level, not to mention Yantar. In Clear Sky I liked the Swamp (first level) and the Red Forest, both very atmospheric, especially the Swamp, but the Red Forest is more dangerous for various reasons including cleverly-placed (and numerous) anomalies.

Overall there's one thing that must be said in my opinion, is that you should play all three of them, first under their vanilla setting, and then with modifications, additionally I don't think that there's "one very best" mod, since of course it depends on personal preferences in the end, if you like chaos and randomization you might want to try out AMK for Shadow of Chernobyl, but if you like the way vanilla plays but would appreciate some new sounds, textures and other additions without breaking its linearity (relatively speaking) too much (like AMK does for instance) then you might want to go with Oblivion Lost, or there's also Priboi if you want to try it from another story perspective (playing as a military).

All in all, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is certainly amongst the best FPS games ever made.
 
Definately finish your game in vanilla THEN do Oblivion Lost THEN do Pryboi Story.

If you want to replay standard SOC later, I would then reccomend the Complete mod. IT doesn't mess with game play so much as update graphics/sound and squashes any remaining bugs.

Stalker is my favorite of all times.
 
lavaheadache said:
if you like the vanilla version , you will be blown away by the STALKER COMPLETE 2009 mod. .
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Check out the "Zone Reclamation Project" mod at metacognix.com. It incorporates a number of other good mods, and it fixes a myriad of issues that plagued the original game.

Highly Recommend!

Metron
 
I'd go through Complete first. It makes things look even nicer, but with a greater similarity to the original Vanilla version. If you like that, you can consider Oblivion Lost, which makes a lot of changes, some I liked a lot, some less so. Still OL is worth it.
 
I loved all three Stalker games. Clear Sky is the hardest one, but in exchange it has the most powerful artifacts and equipment upgrades of all three games. I’m currently about 2/3 through Call of Pripyat and it’s just as good as the first two games. The Stalker games perfectly nail an atmosphere very few other games are able to capture. This is PC gaming at its finest, and I hope they continue making sequels using the same basic recipe.

As for Shadow of Chernobyl, I recently finished it for the third time. This time around I tried the Stalker Complete mod but I found it ruined the game because of balance changes, specifically with regards to weapons being far too powerful and combat being almost trivial. The graphics and UI was improved though, but it was far too hard to just extract the mods I wanted out of it.

So in the end I vastly prefer the vanilla versions of all three games, except I add the sleeping bag mod to the first two. I find exploring outdoors is more immersive during the day because the graphics are better, though occasional lightning-filled night fighting is awesome too.
 
OK the myriad endings fascinate me now. No spoilers, I promise. Only experienced one so far and apparently it was a "false" ending...yet it seemed appropriate.

Must replay game 6 or 7 more times now 😛 . Joyfully.
 
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richierich1212 said:
so I should've bought that THQ pack from steam afterall. Doh.
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I bought that package even though I already had Stalker in my Steam account (and I added Stalker to my Steam account even though I already had a retail copy). After I heard that Metro 2033 was made by the same people who made Stalker (I hope that's true) and was included in the package I went ahead and got it. If I hadn't I would have waited until I could get Metro 2033 for $9.99 or less and I really didn't want to wait that long.
 
BFG10K said:
I loved all three Stalker games. Clear Sky is the hardest one, but in exchange it has the most powerful artifacts and equipment upgrades of all three games. I’m currently about 2/3 through Call of Pripyat and it’s just as good as the first two games. The Stalker games perfectly nail an atmosphere very few other games are able to capture. This is PC gaming at its finest, and I hope they continue making sequels using the same basic recipe.

As for Shadow of Chernobyl, I recently finished it for the third time. This time around I tried the Stalker Complete mod but I found it ruined the game because of balance changes, specifically with regards to weapons being far too powerful and combat being almost trivial. The graphics and UI was improved though, but it was far too hard to just extract the mods I wanted out of it.

So in the end I vastly prefer the vanilla versions of all three games, except I add the sleeping bag mod to the first two. I find exploring outdoors is more immersive during the day because the graphics are better, though occasional lightning-filled night fighting is awesome too.
Click to expand...

One of the big disadvantages of the large overarcing mods: You'll like everything in it, except for one nasty dealbreaker. I prefer the ones that allow modular activation. Or you can get the mod activating package and hope the individual mods play nice with one another.

Combat, especially the craptastic accuracy and damage of the weaponry were one of my big beefs with the original vanilla Stalker. But everyone doesn't view it the same way obviously, thus the better route of modular mods.

The Stalker ambience is great, heads above similar types of games I've played.
 
Well, after reading this thread I bought and installed the game. I updated to 1.6 or whatever, but every time I try and load the game the screen goes black and immediately crashes. I've googled around, but none of the fixes seem to work and most people can hear sound (I can't).

Windows 7
ATI Radeon HD something with fully updated drivers.
 
Anyone notice at first it had a big picture of Metro 2033 instead of serious sam, but with the 10 dollar price, I was trying like a mad man to buy Metro for 10 bucks, lol
 
marmasatt said:
This game is one of my favorite games of all times. Top 3/5 for sure. IMO the other two don't really stack up. Or maybe I was just spoiled. They are not bad. But I was not blown away, as in SOC.
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The plots didn't feel quite as epic in the other two, though I did like a lot of the functionality changes they brought. Clear Sky in particular has a questionable plot (the game just sort of ends like, "oh hey you're done the end") and Call of Pripyat wasn't bad, but you found yourself wondering "why do I care?". Call of Pripyat also suffered from some weird design choices, like only having three playable areas versus the 8+ in the previous games. Still, Clear Sky has a nice weapon and upgrade system, better player combat, some nice faction stuff too. Call of Pripyat is rather satisfying sometimes, decent the rest. Overall each is pretty fun; Shadow of Chernobyl just has the "impress the hell out of you" thing down pat.
 
Played through to one of the "true" endings and am utterly satisfied. That was just fabulous. Best possible ending I could get I think.

Probably will do the Oblivion Lost (or maybe Lurk) mod, given that Complete will just pretty up the same gaming experience. Not that I don't want to see that of course. I've enjoyed everybody's input thus far. Feel bad for the guy who bought the game and can't get it to run though. Sounds like a video driver issue to me.
 
yukichigai said:
Call of Pripyat also suffered from some weird design choices, like only having three playable areas versus the 8+ in the previous games.
Click to expand...
That didn’t really matter since each area had more to explore than a typical area in SoC or CS. That and there was a good reason to re-explore anomalies after emissions. Also the side-quests were more in depth than the typical “fetch me an artifact or random body part” from the first two games.

In the end I found CoP to be about the same length as the first two games.
 
This thread made me choose STALKER as the next game I would play, as it has been in my Steam directory for over a year without being touched. There are still some things that puzzle me though. It may be a consequence of just finishing BioShock though.

1. Is there really nothing in 99% of the rooms of buildings and outside? The atmosphere is very dark, which I like, but going over pitch black corridors with my flashlight looking for anything interesting feels like a waste of time. Either that or I'm not being careful and thorough enough.

2. Will I ever get to a state where I can survive anomalies? While they're cool and all, it's still frustrating to randomly die when letting your guard down for a moment.

3. The Controller mutant.
How the hell was I supposed to know that it can only be killed hand-to-hand? I had to hit gamefaqs to find that out.
Am I going to run into more situations like that?
 
Not sure which of the Stalker's you're playing but I'll assume SoC.

Daverino said:
1. Is there really nothing in 99% of the rooms of buildings and outside? The atmosphere is very dark, which I like, but going over pitch black corridors with my flashlight looking for anything interesting feels like a waste of time. Either that or I'm not being careful and thorough enough.
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There is a fair amount of stuff in the rookie village.
You can find an artifact, a medkit or two, some food, and some armor.
However if you walk into random buildings in the game most will be empty (populated buildings tend to have stuff). There tends to be more stuff hidden in the underground areas. In vanilla SoC artifacts are just lying on the ground and don't respawn so once you pick them up they're gone forever. Most mods add emissions and have emissions spawn new artifacts.

Daverino said:
2. Will I ever get to a state where I can survive anomalies? While they're cool and all, it's still frustrating to randomly die when letting your guard down for a moment.
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If by survive you mean walk through with impunity, no. There are suits of armor that give you a fair degree of environmental protection, so say you walk through an acid pool you'll take almost no damage. But your suit will and in vanilla that's worse than you taking the damage. And anomolies like the whirlywig you'll always have to avoid. Paying attention and not running into anomolies is part of the stalker experience. And if you think vanilla is bad don't play mods like Narodnaya Soljanka which have 5x as many anomolies. (NS is by far the best SoC mod currently available in English IMO if you don't mind Google translated Russian.)

Daverino said:
3. The Controller mutant.
How the hell was I supposed to know that it can only be killed hand-to-hand? I had to hit gamefaqs to find that out.
Am I going to run into more situations like that?
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Only killed by hand to hand? I've never killed a controller using hand to hand. In SoC the easiest way is to use grenades. For the one in the Agropom Underground, as soon as you hear him turn around and throw a grenade back down the hallway. He'll step out, zap your brain once, and then the grenade will go off and kill him. Note that this trick works less well in the later games.
 
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rangda said:
Only killed by hand to hand? I've never killed a controller using hand to hand. In SoC the easiest way is to use grenades. For the one in the Agropom Underground, as soon as you hear him turn around and throw a grenade back down the hallway. He'll step out, zap your brain once, and then the grenade will go off and kill him. Note that this trick works less well in the later games.
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Since meeting the controller was the first encounter with a video game enemy that scared the piss out of me since the headcrab, I'll respond in spoiler tags. If anyone hasn't played the game, I don't want to ruin the experience.

From gamefaqs I learned that he won't use the brain zap if you're close enough. In fact he will just stand there and let you hack him to pieces with a knife. Basically, if you get close enough it's a free kill. I must have died 20-30 times in the Agropom Underground before looking up whether he was supposed to be an unkillable boss. In the end he was pathetically easy, just run right towards him with the knife.
 
Daverino said:
Since meeting the controller was the first encounter with a video game enemy that scared the piss out of me since the headcrab, I'll respond in spoiler tags. If anyone hasn't played the game, I don't want to ruin the experience.

From gamefaqs I learned that he won't use the brain zap if you're close enough. In fact he will just stand there and let you hack him to pieces with a knife. Basically, if you get close enough it's a free kill. I must have died 20-30 times in the Agropom Underground before looking up whether he was supposed to be an unkillable boss. In the end he was pathetically easy, just run right towards him with the knife.
Click to expand...

He will swing at you and hurt you, but he's easy to kill close up. There are a couple places where getting close up is near impossible though, both involve long corridors.
 
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